LAS VEGAS  This year was the first time that Razer, a Carlsbad maker of headphones, controllers and other accessories for hard-core gamers, set up a full-fledged booth at the giant Consumer Electronics Show here.

In prior years, it only had a meeting room off the side of the show floor, or invited customers to a hotel suite off site. The move into “a big boy booth” for the company highlights the optimism from gadget makers at this year’s show, despite the sluggish economy. Among the thousands of company’s exhibiting this week, about two dozen are from San Diego County.

Sony Electronics, the North American arm of Japanese conglomerate Sony Corp., and wireless giant Qualcomm lead the pack of local firms. But several smaller companies also are making news at the show. The U-T caught up with six local firms to discuss what new products they were highlighting at the event.

The San Diego no-contract wireless provider is rolling out Muve, which it says is the world’s first music download service that is included as part of a wireless rate plan at no extra charge. For $55 a month, Cricket subscribers get unlimited downloads from a catalog of millions of songs from four major record labels, said Jeff Toig, a Cricket vice president. The songs are stored on a memory card in the $199 Samsung Suede phone. Cricket has worked out a revenue sharing deal with major record labels and with some independents. The Muve app is a full-blown music management software service that includes playlists and customized radio. The Suede mobile phone includes a “music” button on the keypad that’s a shortcut to the app. Muve aims to give consumers a reason not only to subscribe to Cricket’s wireless service, but also stick with Cricket. Once a subscriber drops Cricket, they no longer have access to the songs.

Entropic makes chips that allow for high definition video streaming throughout the home via coaxial cable. So shows recorded on the DVR in the living room can be replayed on a TV in the upstairs bedroom. At CES, Entropic announced that its next-generation chips pack streaming power of 400 megabits per second. That means users of its whole home DVR technology could stream 20 HD movies at once to devices throughout the home, compared with five HD movie streams now. Entropic’s next generation home networking technology can also achieve speeds of up to 800 megabits as part of other enhancements in bringing video signals to the home. Anton Monk, an Entropic vice president, said that as cable, satellite and wireless operators boost Internet speeds, the demand to connect devices like TVs to computers to game consoles is only going to grow. “Now that you can get 100 megabits per second (for Internet service in some parts of the country,) you don’t want your home network to be the bottleneck.”

This San Diego start-up launched its Web-based software products for family caregivers that help seniors live independently. Products include a Smart Reminders service, which has a medications reminder, a calendar for important appointments and a life stories feature that helps caregivers record memories of their seniors. It also showed off a prototype of a tablet that could serve as the centerpiece to Independa’s platform for helping seniors live life longer at home. The tablet isn’t on the market yet, but it will come into beta-testing phase this year, said Kian Saneii, chief executive of the company. It aims to engage seniors with technology that is simple to use yet provides them with a host of services that will keep them independent longer. “It’s an overlooked emographic,” said Saneii. “It doesn’t matter how old you get. You want to use fun things and engage with them.”